Bushel and Berry® Sapphire Cascade Blueberry

If you have a porch or balcony, you already know how wonderful hanging baskets make it look. They bring the plants right up to you, where they can easily be admired, and they make your home look charming and welcoming. When we think about plants for them we usually think of flowers, but with the Sapphire Cascade Blueberry you can combine home fruit growing with beauty, all in a single plant. No need to replant every year either, because this perennial bush will live for years, always beautiful and always productive. It’s unique cascading growth pattern means the blue bounty spills out of the basket, ready to pick and enjoy. The sweetly-fragrant white flowers smother the bush, creating beauty, and in fall the leaves begin to change color, and through winter they glow with shades of deep-red, making a charming winter scene. Your harvest of delicious sweet berries will peak in mid-July, but you will have plenty of berries earlier and later, as this plant produces over a long season. Perfect for baskets, but also a great ground cover bush, this is one blueberry that makes edible landscaping a gorgeous reality. Just step onto the porch, and it’s harvest time.

Growing the Bushel & Berry® Sapphire Cascade Blueberry

Size and Appearance

The Sapphire Cascade Blueberry is a compact, multi-stemmed bush, with branches that grow 18 to 24 inches long, arching over and cascading downwards. The foliage is dense, making a bushy plant, and the leaves are 1½ to 2 inches long, elongated ovals with a smooth, slightly glossy surface. They are a warm mid-green in color, and in fall the tips and then the whole leaf develops flushes of dark red, which spread over the plant so that through winter it is an attractive and decorative dark red. In Spring flowering begins on branches from the previous year, and even though the bush is small, hundreds of blooms will appear over the season. The flowers are in clusters of 3 to 10 and they are like tiny, white, hanging upside-down urns, with a gentle sweet fragrance. Blooms last about a week before developing into berries, which take about 80 days to reach maturity. When ready to harvest the berries will be ½ in diameter, and the classic blue color, dusted with white, of the best blueberries. They have a tangy, delicious flavor perfect for scattering on cereal or baking into muffins, turning into smoothies, or whatever blueberry treats your family loves.

Using the Bushel & Berry® Sapphire Cascade Blueberry in Your Garden

The Sapphire Cascade Blueberry has a cascading growth pattern, making it perfect for unique roles in the garden. In your beds it makes a wonderful groundcover, planted 18 inches apart, that will finish the front of your beds perfectly. But it is in hanging baskets and pots that it really stands out. The charm of those pendulous branches, heavy with flowers or berries, or red in winter, makes it a great porch decoration in a basket, in a pair of pots at the top of the stairs, or even in a window box – you don’t even need a garden at all.

Hardiness

The Sapphire Cascade Blueberry is hardy from zone 5 to 9. It is a low-chill variety, needing just 450 hours of winter temperatures below 45 degrees, so it will grow well even in areas with mild winters. In cold zones, if you grow it in baskets, it would be best to place these directly on the ground, or even partially buried, for good winter survival.

Sun Exposure and Soil Conditions

For the best crops, grow the Sapphire Cascade Blueberry in full sun. It does have specific soil requirements for acid soil, which should have a value on the pH scale of 5.5 or less. The ideal soil is rich with organic material and with good drainage, so that it is moist but not a swamp. For baskets and pots, make sure your container has a drainage hole, and use a potting soil that has been created for acid-loving plants (such as azaleas), adding some shredded pine bark to it, if you can. Water whenever the top of the soi begins to dry a little.

Maintenance and Pruning

Once you have the right soil, water regularly, and grow in full sun, the Sapphire Cascade Blueberry is an easy plant to grow. It normally has few or no issues with pests or diseases, and for pests we recommend Neem Oil Spray, an all-natural, non-toxic control. Especially in pots and baskets, fertilize regularly with a liquid fertilizer for acid-loving plants, through early spring and early summer. There is no need for any fancy pruning, just trim extra-long shoots back in late winter to encourage a nice bushy growth pattern. New shoots don’t produce berries, so don’t trim more than necessary.

History and Origin of the Bushel & Berry® Sapphire Cascade Blueberry

Modern blueberry bushes are usually hybrid plants, created by expert breeders from the main species of wild blueberry. The variety we know as Sapphire Cascade is no exception to that, and it was created by David Brazelton and Adam Wagner of Fall Creek Farm and Nursery, Inc., in Lowell, Oregon, with input from Dr. Peter Boches, a expert in plant genetics. They combined three different bushes – Vaccinium myrsinites, the shiny blueberry; Vaccinium corymbosum, the northern highbush blueberry; and the wild lowbush blueberry, Vaccinium angustifolium – to make the variety officially known as `FC12-029`. This brand-new variety was patented in 2020, and has been released with the name Sapphire Cascade by Star® Roses and Plants as the latest plant in their Bushel & Berry® range. Take a look at other unique berry bushes in our selection of these great berry plants for edible landscaping

Buying the Bushel & Berry® Sapphire Cascade Blueberry at The Tree Center

Edible landscaping is the latest gardening trend, and everyone loves harvesting delicious home-grown food from attractive plants right in their ornamental garden. Even if you have no garden you can enjoy the Sapphire Cascade Blueberry, and join the trend. But order now – these unique plants won’t be in our stock for very long at all.